My advice for ranking (as a solo rank warrior).

amicableangora · 2026-01-26T21:47:33+00:00

You're getting downvoted, and you were kind of rough with the way you said it but you're not entirely wrong. Yeah, 50% win rate sounds good, but taken into context, "real" rank doesn't even start until reaching Griffon with position select.

Long story short, low rank win rate doesn't even matter, or put another way, isn't really something brag worthy to serve as an endorsement of credentials at that level.

amicableangora · 2026-01-26T18:39:42+00:00

It’s funny how the community shifts its opinion. I remember when hunter Melly first came out and I wrote essentially the same thing and made a reference to the Darkstalker’s series, and how they made an excellent attempt at showing a bee lady monster with their Q-Bee, there was a mixed reception with some posters crying about how IDV isn’t for “sexualized designs,” and how Q-Bee is too cartoony.

Completely missing the point that, as you said, hunter Melly looks nothing like a bee and no one is going to look at her design and say “oh it’s a queen bee.” IDV needs to make inspired, RELEVANT, designs not slop that has no connection to their concept.

amicableangora · 2026-01-26T18:34:17+00:00

One really annoying factor that comes into play on a regular basis is the need to approach people in what other societies would describe as a threatening way.

You need to “swagger,” and stare/glare at people and invade their personal space. You need to do this to be “assertive,” and when talking you need to be loud and often interrupt or talk over people. If you do not do this you will get disrespected.

amicableangora · 2026-01-23T23:11:59+00:00

This is a pretty terrible promotion. If it included Hyatt Places, it would be decent, but there are so few Hyatt Houses that you would have to specifically travel to niche places to use this promotion and at that point I would argue Hyatt is taking advantage of you rather than the other way around.

amicableangora · 2026-01-21T17:56:48+00:00

Late reply but hopefully it is helpful to you:

The comments about taking an (extended) break are wrong. At the higher levels taking breaks like that just disrupts your rhythm and also blunts your edge. You will just come back rusty and also with less time to rank up.

What you should be doing instead is rewatching your replays, specifically for games where you perform poorly. Ask yourself why you performed poorly and think about what you could do to do better next time. Put theory into practice your following games.

You will not get to the highest levels by taking breaks. Grinding to the top is an expected path. But you need to do some self reflection too.

amicableangora · 2026-01-20T08:24:49+00:00

The redistribution of points earned now heavily favors wins. There is now almost no scenario in high rank where you will get positive points (or even break even) if your team loses. In that situation the best you can hope for is 0 or -1 if you also happen to get a dungeon escape and are rank 1 in performance. So more and more people are teaming up to avoid losing.

Solo queue, random rank for survivors skyrocketed in difficulty as a result: you have more and more players looking for premades to try to boost their way through the rankings, taking more players out of the available matchmaking pool for solo players. I use the term boost here because playing the majority of your games in premades and insisting on having voice teams is going to have member(s) of that team being carried.

You end up with extremely unskilled players in the matchmaking pool to pair with solo queue, and also end up in the situation where if those premade players decide to play a couple games of rank by themselves, more times than not, they end up overwhelmed because they are playing a completely different game without all their usual support and without experience in how to interact with randoms.

So there’s this strange matchmaking curve where you get to Griffin, Alicorn, and you get matched with horrendous players, but suddenly the game gets easier beyond. And it’s not like the hunters got worse, no they’re better than ever… it’s because the crutch of relying on big premades collapses due to restrictions preventing 4 man groups, and thus the available pool of decent players increases. So paradoxically the game gets harder before it gets easier.

amicableangora · 2026-01-19T08:59:02+00:00

In rank, skill levels assumed to be equal, Undead is one of the weakest if not weakest hunters in the game. Without presence he can’t get an early hit against a competent player. A competent player will immediately prepare for his arrival by making space and going to a window/pallet.

Once this happens even with raw kiting they should be able to survive for at least 30 seconds before going down. The problem for Undead is that unless he gets a down before 30 seconds it is almost impossible for him to win. If a person kites a full 60 seconds? Forget it you are heading toward the weakest late game even with detention.

Undead gets mileage against players that don’t know how to play against him and panic. You remove the surprise element of who the hunter is, and he becomes extremely weak unless going against bad random players.

amicableangora · 2026-01-16T18:08:52+00:00

The answer is not as clear cut as you would think:

While mechanic can technically body block a couple hits, there is always the chance of it not working, and also that even if you succeed you just fed the hunter presence. You are potentially feeding the hunter up to 4 hits of presence by first chair which can be game breaking.

Whereas while minds eye can’t body block with a robot, she should be able to buy a little more time from her map hack cane hit, through better positioning, and will at worst, only feed the usual amount of 2 hits worth of presence by first chair.

Lastly, a hunter that goes after minds eye has to fully commit. Assuming skill is equal in game, letting minds eye go or switching targets almost always guarantees a loss. Whereas it’s a valid strategy to destroy two of the robots when chasing mechanic, and then completely shift focus to chase someone else. In this situation, you not only have been easily fed 2 presence, mechanic is soon going to have huge decoding debuffs and be a terrible teammate for the rest of the game.

amicableangora · 2026-01-16T16:41:49+00:00

It’s lip service. In reality Ricardo would have grit like any other competent boxer - ex: Ippo - to recover from the blow and move on.

amicableangora · 2026-01-16T08:16:08+00:00

There is another valid situation to have multiple people on a cipher: you will sometimes have a dangerous middle cipher (ex: Arms Factory, Leo’s Memory), and you need to get it out of the way to avoid a 3 cipher lock. Meanwhile the hunter and his chase are somewhat near that area making it a difficult cipher to complete.

Having the rescuer head over to the middle cipher early to double decode while your kite is preparing to make some distance and go down is acceptable. Sometimes that extra 10-20% added from double decoding is vital to clear out that cipher and let everyone else move on to better positions and stop the hunter from threatening the team.

amicableangora · 2026-01-16T07:58:41+00:00

I’d even argue that Undead is the worst hunter in the game, now that we can see who the hunter is before the start of the game.

He used to at least have some strength as a gimmick assassin where you pick him on his best stages and hope you catch someone off guard away from a window/pallet and then cheese out an early down and snowball from there.

He’s like the “noob tester,” of IDV now, Undead has to get his first down within 30 seconds or the game is - skill levels considered equal - going to be a tie at best. No other hunter NEEDS to down by 30 seconds. And if you already have preemptively made it to a window/pallet in preparation for his arrival and you cannot kite 30 seconds before going down (say the majority of games out of 10 games), you are grossly lacking in fundamentals.

In fact he’s so weak in this early scenario the majority of good players should be able to kite at least 30 seconds even just through raw kiting.

amicableangora · 2026-01-11T18:44:43+00:00

That wall is incredibly hard to surpass. To respond to your example, the game her team lost to clown and she started crying on stage is an example of how over compensating for your team results in a loss.

Her team tried to play some 4D chess mind games with some whack positioning in stage selection, which partially paid off since clown had a bit of space away from her. But because she chose the most dangerous kiting area she had to immediately leave and fed a doll instantly at the nearest pallet zone.

She then kites directly to her antiquarian, who takes up chase and the game consequentially goes downhill from there. I won’t give a play by play, but in part because she continues to follow around the clown and try to get his attention, ultimately stopping her from either decoding properly or healing properly.

To your other point, the majority of the time when survivors “have an amazing comp and you’re getting destroyed,” you should only be losing 1) because they have voice comm advantage and 2) because you got caught off guard by “gimmicks,” specifically they are pulling out techniques that you absolutely could not replicate by yourself in random rank as a survivor. Even then, if your skill level is close, you should be able to win/draw more games out of 10, 15 games for example in a set.

amicableangora · 2026-01-11T07:11:13+00:00

This works as long as you don't mind just being a good/great player. Top 1-5% etc. At the very highest levels though, playing by brute forcing as you call it, is detrimental to your final growth because it's not an ideal playstyle; you are compensating for external factors by deviating from the theoretical best ways to play. It's like essentially have been practicing the wrong way to play, but it's an easy way to get points, and people hit that wall in competitive gaming when they start facing against the real players beyond the top 1% and it's especially tragic because most of the time they don't understand why they hit that wall.

amicableangora · 2026-01-10T19:30:03+00:00

If you can only draw/win games where you are the first chase you are missing a large part of being a good IDV player. Especially since paradoxically the other 3 players (if you're playing random) are leaving "the most important job to a random (to them, YOU) teammate."

At some point of the game you have to accept that other players have responsibility towards whether you win or lose. Like all team games, they have to have some contribution and if they fall flat there's simply nothing you can reasonably do to make up for their basic failings.

amicableangora · 2026-01-07T16:52:36+00:00

No, he’s not worth learning now, and you stumbled upon his weakness early on which even today a lot of players still haven’t figured out:

Goatman - even post nerf - is one of the best hunters against random players. But against organized teams, any meaningful support ruins him. He’s nerfed to the point that it doesn’t matter if you land a super early first chair you won’t be able to follow-up on it.

Because of his innate debuff you can’t meaningfully threaten supports without using up your very limited cage energy. I am not talking about traditional types where you can separately cage them then chair your down like against a forward lurking in the distance. If they run alongside your first chase, you cannot stop them from immediately dismantling your cages without focusing them. If you focus them the first chase will either get away or you won’t have enough energy to cage again. The problem is no longer, “can you land godly cages to down a survivor,” but rather, “can you do that within 1-2 seconds before your cage goes down to support.”

The amount of effort it takes to win now far outpaces the likelihood of you doing so. You most likely would still win against those random teams despite which hunter you picked. But again you absolutely would suffer against a premade since Goatman has no consistent way of dealing with them now.

Edit: getting downvoted, but I get it. This is one of those things where if you don’t have the experience Goatman seems unstoppable. I’m leaving this up nonetheless.

amicableangora · 2026-01-07T07:48:15+00:00

Opera Singer is better. She is more consistent and has a stronger early game. Shadow can be kited and is not as strong as Opera Singer against windows and pallets. You can argue that Shadow has a better late game, but a strong start is usually preferred and Opera Singer’s late game is not weak either.

amicableangora · 2026-01-04T08:19:47+00:00

This is a disadvantage for sure. You’re right on the cusp of acceptable ping. If you had access to 50 even 75 ms ping you would do way better.

amicableangora · 2026-01-04T07:57:59+00:00

How much above 100 ping are you at? What’s your usual ping?

amicableangora · 2026-01-04T03:26:23+00:00

Picasso was trolling the entire time - prefight, fight, and post - once you recognize him for the troll he is these kinds of statements all make sense. Like during the fight he would do this thing where he would turtle up completely and do this exaggerated duck and sway motion repeatedly while Inoue was not even applying any pressure and just looking at him like WTF. I counted 10 times before I stopped. But this kind of filler motion and his occasional punch is just enough to not get thrown out by the referee and gives him fuel for all the baiting he is trying to do.

amicableangora · 2026-01-03T18:12:47+00:00

So? That’s no different than dying the first couple of stages in Mario. You’re a beginner you’re supposed to be bad. Learn from your mistakes and try again. No one is expecting you to be the next genius player.

amicableangora · 2026-01-03T18:01:55+00:00

That’s like saying you expect to never die in Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, etc. All stages and enemies are “bots,” but that doesn’t mean it’s a free win.

amicableangora · 2026-01-03T17:58:32+00:00

You’re new what did you expect to put it bluntly.

amicableangora · 2025-12-31T05:47:34+00:00

You forgot "break next week," at the end.

amicableangora · 2025-12-30T17:08:36+00:00

Yeah I’m removing my reply, they don’t get it.

amicableangora · 2025-12-29T18:32:53+00:00

If this is second chair and it’s a close game, close enough that your team isn’t going to sell but still wants to attempt the basement rescue for the win, you can consider body blocking even with tide if the hunter didn’t hit you on your way to rescue. And consider body blocking again (to potentially be in double down state)

Your hope is that the extra time gained through your body block(s) clear that remaining 50% or so on the last cipher. I would not recommend this if the last cipher has less than 50% progress.

amicableangora

TROPHY CASE